Virginia just hung 48 points on Duke last weekend while the defense kept the Blue Devils off the board. A week earlier, Georgia Tech needed a touchdown in the final minute to beat the Blue Devils in Durham.

So that means the Hoos should handle the Yellow Jackets with little issue this Saturday at Scott Stadium, right? Not exactly, says UVa head coach Bronco Mendenhall.

“You look for comparative scores or teams that you've played,” Mendenhall told a reporter on Monday, “but wow, it's both relevant and dangerous at the same time because there's just so many things that go into that beyond what just that game looks like.”

The 5-2 Wahoos (5-2, 3-2 ACC) are favored by a touchdown going into Saturday night’s 7:30 p.m. kickoff against Georgia Tech (3-3, 2-2 ACC). UVa will take a half-game lead on the Yellow Jackets in the Coastal Division standings onto the field at Scott Stadium, where Georgia Tech’s last win came in 2013.

Virginia won the last meeting between the two schools, a 33-28 victory a Scott Stadium in 2019. The two programs had met every season since 1982 until last year, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced alterations to the ACC schedule.

With a fourth straight home win in the series on Saturday, UVa would hit the six-win mark for the fourth time in Mendenhall's six seasons. A victory would also extend Virginia's current winning streak to four in a row, matching the longest for the program since 2007.

The Hoos have bounced back from losses in their first two ACC games to get back to second place in the Coastal standings with five conference games to play. That has all transpired in the span of the last month. Such is life in the Coastal Division, UVa linebacker Hunter Stewart said on Monday.

“Each day, each week, each game is just a new day in the ACC,” he said. "As we’ve seen in previous years, the ACC is always chaotic. So each game is really an ACC championship game, and that's really the model we've been trying to follow so far through the season. Each game is the ACC championship and you’ve got to fight.”

It’s human nature for people to become more comfortable and self-important and lose some urgency in the face of success, Mendenhall conceded on Monday. He said it’s his job to combat that with his surging football team by continuing to emphasize improvement and maintaining the same routine that has been working.

“I think it's just acknowledging the brutal facts of the Coastal Division,” he said, “and that every single game matters and preparing as such. And anything beyond that, it just gets in the way. Yeah, we know all of that, and okay, what exactly do we have to do within our assignment, our technique and our effort, and that's really what we can control, and considering any of the other things is just noise.”

Mendenhall was joined by Stewart and running back Devin Darrington for Monday’s regular weekly media session on Zoom. Another game week for the Wahoos means another edition of the 3-2-1: